Electronic Invoicing Tag

Germany is the biggest market within the biggest economic region in the world and thanks to the German's decision on e-invoicing, the cost of doing business in the EU has just started to drop. The news as reported by Christian Lanng is perfectly timed. It coincides with EXPP, the biggest e-invoicing conference in Europe, that kicks off next week and it comes at a time when the EU desperately needs a bit of good economic news. So why is this so important?

It's been over a decade since the e-business machine was mobilised and it began to evangelise the use of the internet to deliver supply chain efficiencies. There were some big claims made about how much public sector organisations could save - some of which were valid, others a little optimistic - and despite scepticism in some quarters, the UK government, like most across the world, recognised that the new purchase to pay solutions that were emerging could deliver significant value.

The banks have known about the e-invoicing opportunity for years. More than one global bank was seriously investigating the concept as a means of generating transaction revenue before the turn of the century. Why is it then that over 10 years later do we still have no bank-led e-invoice offering and why have the banks elected to ignore what is a potentially serious threat to their core business?